Visitors will be urged to reconsider spending time in picturesque but impoverished communities at great risk from Covid-19
The East Cape of New Zealand’s North Island is remote and picture-postcard idyll – boasting a historic lighthouse, wild beaches and mist-cloaked mountains. But as the country prepares to lockdown for four weeks of national self-isolation to fight the spread of Covid-19, indigenous groups in the region say the measures will not go far enough to keep them safe and plan checkpoints on highways into their towns to turn away anyone who doesn’t live or work there.
“Our people are scared,” says Tina Ngata, one of the organisers of the checkpoint to be set up outside the town of Te Araroa; another will spring up outside Ruatoria with more planned further up the coast. “We want to minimise people coming to the region.”
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